Lincoln Jopp MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Apr 2025 · Foreign Investment: UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for that answer. I particularly thank him for saying that investment is the Government’s top priority, because the Government announced on 17 October that they had secured this £63 billion. We have heard from the Chancellor that she is going to act decisively, so I just want to check her track record on that. The Government have had six months and £63 billion. How much money has gone out of the door for those oven-ready projects across the country?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Foreign Investment: UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  7. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the UK international investment summit 2024 on levels of foreign investment.

• 8 Apr 2025 · Blair Mayne: Posthumous Victoria Cross · Hansard source

  More

  I had not intended to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, so forgive me for not being as eloquent as other contributors. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton). He mentioned David Stirling, and it would be remiss of me not to mention, particularly while wearing this tie, that David Stirling was, of course, a Scots Guard—my own regiment, in which I spent 25 years. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. For something that is 80 years too late, it is timely. He had me, to be perfectly honest, when he said that the King was confused and disappointed that Mayne had not been awarded the Victoria Cross. He had me when he said that Winston Churchill was equally confused, discombobulated and disappointed. It was the mention of Churchill that put me in mind of a particular Churchill quote about medals: “A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.” That has been going round my head as I have listened to hon. Members, so much so that I went and found the whole quotation. It was from a speech given in this place on 22 March 1944. I quote: “The object of giving medals, stars and ribbons”— I will not do an impression by the way— “is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value… A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.” —[ Official Report , 22 March 1944; Vol. 398, c. 872.] The way to get rid of shadows is to shine a light. I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Strangford is shining a full beam light on the case of Paddy Mayne today. I invite the Minister to continue to shine that light with a review of this case in the cold light of day, such that the Ministry of Defence can reconsider and award Blair Paddy Mayne the Victoria Cross he so richly deserves.

• 8 Apr 2025 · Armed Forces Covenant · Hansard source

  More

  Does the hon. and gallant Member think that our Northern Ireland veterans, and specifically our former special forces members, are under attack from the very state that they served? Does he think that they deserve protection under the armed forces covenant?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Armed Forces Covenant · Hansard source

  More

  rose—

• 8 Apr 2025 · EU Tariffs: United States and Northern Ireland Economy · Hansard source

  More

  I am particularly concerned about the cash flow of small businesses in Northern Ireland in the event that the EU increases its tariffs. In his discussions with HMRC, has the Secretary of State established what the average waiting time is for the duty reimbursement scheme to kick in? Is there any prospect of shortening that time if the amount of money out of the door increases in the event of EU tariffs?

• 7 Apr 2025 · Property Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  13. What steps she is taking to ensure that property management companies are adequately regulated.

• 7 Apr 2025 · Property Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  On Friday, I met with Jacqui, Gary and Simon in Fairwater Drive in my Spelthorne constituency. Jacqui’s service charge is going up from £1,500 a year to £4,800. I sat down and had a look at the bills, and they are without any itemisation, so it is impossible to know where to start with the property manager. The Minister wrote in response to a recent written question: “We will set out our full position on regulation of estate, letting and managing agents in due course.” Can he give some reassurance to Jacqui, Gary and Simon that their interests will not be put on to the back-burner and suggest when “in due course” might be?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Waste Incinerators · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate. I hope my speech will be a lesson to those hon. Members lucky enough to not yet have an incinerator in their constituency. The Surrey waste transfer station is in my constituency of Spelthorne. For those Members who thought Spelthorne was in Lancashire or Lincolnshire, it is actually the only borough in Surrey north of the River Thames. Why someone decided to put Surrey’s eco centre right on its northern boundary remains a mystery to me. It was opposed by the borough council and by the public, although in the face of that opposition it nevertheless went through. Those Members who represent constituencies to the west of London may subliminally know the centre. As you drive out on the M3—just as it starts and before the M25—all is green and beautiful and then there is this horrific chimney pumping out goodness knows what into the atmosphere. It was planned to be a gasification plant; post recycling, waste would go into the gasifier, which would then produce the electricity to run the anaerobic digestion plant, where food waste would go. The trouble is that, like the provision mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby South, it does not work. The gasifier has never worked to optimum capacity and has continually broken down, and the process does not work because it does not produce enough electricity to run the anaerobic digester. Anyway, Surrey is not diverting enough of its food waste into the anaerobic digester for it to run at capacity and throw off additional electricity on to the grid system. I hope that that is a lesson for those who want to build their case against further incinerators—come and have a look at the case study. The noise pollution, the air pollution and indeed the water pollution caused by food waste leakages have all plagued local people. That is a source of considerable frustration. What can we learn from all of this? The first thing that we all ought to learn is that we should all waste far less food. Between a quarter and a third of all food in this country ends up in landfill, which is appalling when so many people are hungry. I am blessed to have in my constituency an amazing charity called Surplus to Supper, which takes in 4 tonnes of food a day from supermarkets within a 7 to 8-mile radius, and produces hundreds of thousands of meals a year for before and after school clubs. I recommend that we look at that model. There is a second lesson that we can take from all of this. I heard the Secretary of State say that we were in a “sprint to decarbonise” our economy and I heard the Deputy Prime Minister say that, under the planning framework, nimbys were not going to stand in the way of development. Those two things concern me, because they could combine to allow further programmes and plans simply to ignore local concerns. If local concerns had been listened to at the time that the Spelthorne eco park was being built, it would not have been built and would not have become the failure that it is. We need to have a weather eye on these cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technologies that promise the earth at the time they are developed but cost the earth in the long term.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Irish Guards: 125th Anniversary · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful for your forbearance, Mr Pritchard, and it is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship. [ Interruption. ]

• 2 Apr 2025 · Irish Guards: 125th Anniversary · Hansard source

  More

  I want to add my own words of tribute to my brothers in the Irish Guards. My warrior sergeant was a man a called Glyn Crawley. As a result of an accident he had, I think as a child, he only had one eye, and he was known universally as the “one IG”, which is one for the military among us to appreciate. In the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, when we were Taskforce Lashkar Gah, we had Sergeant Dale Alonzo McCallum, who we inherited from the Irish Guards and who rebadged as a Scots Guardsman. He was tragically killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan. I paid tribute to him at the time as undoubtedly the coolest Scots Guardsman ever to walk the earth. No doubt his time in the Irish Guards prepared him for that role admirably. The Minister may not be aware that the Irish Guards have also spawned the Blackthorn Rally, members of which go on two wheels and four to some of the craziest places in the world—not least the northern Sahara, Tanzania and Kenya. This year, for the organisation’s 10th anniversary, they are going to Colombia. Sadly, I will not be joining them, because I will be enjoying the joys of the Conservative conference in Birmingham instead. What this extraordinary group of mostly Micks do—

• 2 Apr 2025 · Irish Guards: 125th Anniversary · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister and the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) for their generosity. Before the suspension, I was talking about the extraordinary work of the Blackthorn rally. It is great fun, delivers conservation projects around the world and takes with it former service personnel who are in some cases incredibly disabled—I think our record was one working limb between the two drivers in one RZR. The Irish Guards’ effectiveness and reach are extraordinary, and I pay tribute to them on their birthday.

• 1 Apr 2025 · NHS Pensions · Hansard source

  More

  Does the Minister have full confidence in the chair of the NHS Business Services Authority?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Royal British Legion · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) on securing this debate. In my constituency of Spelthorne, we have 2,500 veterans, and I want to talk about one of them—Alderman Robin Sider, who was awarded the British Empire Medal. He joined the Army as a private soldier and left 40 years later as a major. Like so many military veterans, he still felt imbued with the desire to do public service and he became Spelthorne’s longest serving councillor and twice its mayor. Given the reorganisation of local government, that record will never be beaten. It was the honour of my life last Friday to be a pallbearer at his funeral, and I remembered a particular story about Robin. Last November, I joined him for his stint collecting for the Royal British Legion outside Sainsbury’s in Shepperton High Street. Last year, there had been an innovation, which was the presence of a QR code. Robin was old school if nothing else and he rather liked the bragging rights that came with having collected up to £400 in his bucket. He did not know, if people used the QR reader, how much money they gave and therefore he could not brag about it. I had to rush away and run an errand for about 20 minutes. I came back and saw that the QR code had mysteriously had a poppy wreath placed over it, and as a result his bucket overflowed. I pay tribute to the work of the Royal British Legion and all its volunteers. I am absolutely inundated with choices as to where to enjoy Remembrance Sunday. Equally, I am impressed by all the schools in Spelthorne and the way in which they keep the flame alive with our children. It would be remiss of me not to mention the VE Day celebrations on 8 May, because I know that the Royal British Legion is still out there trying to find every last veteran who was around on VE Day to join it for those celebrations, and I urge anyone watching this debate so to do.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Violence against Shop Workers · Hansard source

  More

  In Ashford and Staines in my constituency we have a real plague of shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. Inspector Matthew Walton of the North division is doing a great job with his team to tackle it, in combination with the community and the retailers, but still the problem is getting worse. After the success of the facial recognition software roll-out in Croydon, will Ministers please consider extending it to Spelthorne, because it would be a welcome addition to policing in my area?

• 26 Mar 2025 · UK-China Relations · Hansard source

  More

  We may disagree about what we heard earlier on today in the spring statement about whether the economy is growing, but we are certain that this Government will grasp ever more desperately at the will-o’-the-wisp of growth in the months and years to come. Does he agree that—unlike the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who said he went to China with his eyes wide open—we might as a country end up turning a Nelsonian eye to human rights abuse, to the fact we are exporting our net zero to a highly carbonised economy and to the cyber-attacks we experience daily from China in order to chase after growth that is not coming?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

  More

  Are the Government considering sending failed asylum seekers to overseas return hubs?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Defence Procurement: SMEs · Hansard source

  More

  We are shortly to appoint a national armaments director with a salary of more than £600,000 a year. I hope that that colossal salary comes with the mandate to be able to tear up the book on defence procurement as we rearm the nation. Will the Minister reassure me that when we get the national armaments director back to the Defence Committee in a year’s time, they will not say, “Well, we tried to change things, but they wouldn’t let me”?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Sentencing Council Guidelines · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister says that the situation is completely clear, so I feel like a bit of an idiot for asking for more clarification, but I will anyway. Pre-sentencing reports are allowed to take in further background on the lives of offenders from an “ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”. What is the definition of a cultural minority, and are our veterans considered a cultural minority?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Employment Incentives · Hansard source

  More

  The people of Spelthorne are very hard-working and do not mind their taxes being paid for a safety net for the most vulnerable in our society, but they really do get annoyed when they see their taxes going to people who are scamming the benefits system. What assessment have any of the Ministers on the Front Bench made of so-called sickfluencer sites—social media platforms where people are shown how to game the benefits system? Have any of them looked at those sites? Are they a good or bad thing?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Employment Incentives · Hansard source

  More

  7. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of incentives to seek employment.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  There are 24 Members sitting on the Government Benches. Would my hon. Friend like to issue an open invitation to them to name a single small business that has been in touch to say that it supports this legislation?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance). She is such a compelling advocate that I am tempted to go on strike myself. I do sense a certain amount of antipathy between the two sides of the House, so, before I come on to make a fair point in support of amendment 292, I want to prepare the ground by doing two things. First, I want to try to convince Labour Members that they missed an opportunity, because I am, at heart, a rabble-rousing potential motivator of people. When, about three Christmases ago, the ambulance drivers went on strike, it irked me that the soldiers who were going to stand in for them at no notice would have their Christmas ruined, so I started a campaign to try to get them an additional £20 for every day they stood in for the ambulance drivers. This plan was—the Chancellor would have loved this—net positive to the Treasury. Of course, the departments that employ the ambulance drivers and the arm’s length bodies do not pay them on strike days, and the pay differential between them and the £20 bung to the soldiers meant that the Government still saved money. I managed to get The Sun on board and get a letter into the paper, and did a bit of television.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I think the hon. Lady has slightly missed the point of what I was saying. Reading the body language of Members on the Government Benches, I think they all wanted to hear how this story ended up. It did help that the then Secretary of State for Defence was a friend of mine, with whom I served in the Scots Guards. We did get the £20 bung for all the service personnel who stood in—regardless of the fact, interestingly, that all the generals, air marshals and admirals were against it, as were all the officials. There you go—I very much have the same values at heart. Secondly, to win over the other side of the House to the very fair point I will come on to make, let me pay tribute to the remark of the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), in respect of union membership, that he wanted people to “make a fair choice one way or the other”. I note that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) also referred to fair work. I want to come back to that theme of fairness in addressing amendment 292. The Bill is, to put it politely, something of a cat’s cradle of clauses, so I will briefly remind the House that the Bill seeks to place on employers an obligation to give their workers a written statement that they have the right to join a union, and, if they do join, to contribute to the political fund. Amendment 292 would simply inject a bit of balance into the legislation by requiring trade unions to notify their members annually that they have a right to opt out of the political fund and to obtain an annual opt-in from their members. This all puts me in mind of November 1988, when Mrs Thatcher was about to visit Poland. At Prime Minister’s questions, just prior to her going, an Opposition Member stood up and asked whether she would raise with Lech Wałęsa the right to join a trade union. There may be some Members present who were there—I will not be so ungallant as to ask. A roar went up from the Labour Benches, and the redoubtable Mrs Thatcher replied that she would raise with the Poles the right to join a trade union, but that she would also raise the right not to be a member. The Bill seeks to whack the pendulum pretty hard in favour of union power; our amendment would bring it back into balance somewhat. We all know someone, after all, who has fallen prey to one of those charity muggers who stop people in the street and try to sign them up to whichever charity they are being paid by that day. I have known people who have done that job, and it is not an easy one. Similarly, any Member of this House who stood in a precinct and tried to sell their political brand and get people to sign up will attest to that completely. Sometimes, the charity collectors are successful, and the all-important direct debit details are extracted. In fact, I remember hearing a number of Labour Members railing against this practice in the previous Parliament. Amendment 292 would remind workers that they still have an off-ramp, if they want one—they still have agency, and they still have freedom of choice. We have heard Member after Member stand up over the past two days of debate and declare—in some cases sheepishly, in some cases more proudly—the money they receive from the trade unions. This is only right and proper. The public can make up their own minds as to whether this money has coloured the judgment of Labour Members, or whether it is simply support from an organisation that shares their values. But to turn down amendment 292 would, in my view, be a dreadful look. This is a totally measured, balancing amendment and, if Labour Members vote against it, the public would be right to conclude that the Government are being motivated not by a sense of equality, fairness and justice, but instead by something else. I urge hon. Members to vote for amendment 292 and to give power to the people.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Among the 5,000 small businesses in my hon. Friend’s constituency, has my hon. Friend come across one that is in favour of the Bill or lobbied him to vote for it?